Walpurgis 0.99 (For Doom/Heretic/Hexen) [NEW RELEASE!!!]

[eharper256]

Following on from creating the new portraits, the obvious next step is updating F1 help cards, which are getting a bit dated by not including any of the alt-slot 2's.

[eharper256]

Here's a video of 100-Line Massacre by NinjaDelphox and Arsinikk:

This one was in one of those surprising 'why does this not have a vid yet?' kind of topics, so here we are. I always like projects that have some kind of restriction in place, they usually make for creative maps, and this is no exception. A highly intense little map-set with some neat gimmicks (they good me good with that red-key trick, I started thinking I was in the Legend of Grimrock for a moment).

You can get it here: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/128171/

[YukesVonFaust]

Following on from creating the new portraits, the obvious next step is updating F1 help cards, which are getting a bit dated by not including any of the alt-slot 2's.

Damn, these are wicked sick portraits. You drew this?

[eharper256]

Damn, these are wicked sick portraits. You drew this?

Yup.

Its funny though, you give me a brush and tell me to do that in a physical medium and you'll regret it hugely.

Pixelart is something I've just had more of a knack for since I can remember. I guess it helps that you get unlimited attempts at it without burning holes in your paper and its much easier to look up reference material straight from the internet and have it side by side on a second window or monitor (In this case, various PS1, SNES, and DOS era character portraits were used as reference materials). I've also gotten very good at making my antique copy of Photoshop CS6 bend to my whims; PS is indeed very, very powerful once you're good with it. And I've been making my own weeb wallpapers and stuff for ages, some of which can be seen on my Steam Workshop.

Glad you like them!

[eharper256]

Well I wasn't actually intending or expecting to have a mid-week video today, but alas, the out of the blue summoning of TNT2 made me figure I should cover it, so here we are:

You get the TNT2 Public Beta here: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/104882

[eharper256]

Apparently my fishsona is the Rainbow Fish. One of the millions in a swirly maelstrom of aqueous darkness, and hopefully the owner of that fine plastic castle.

April Fool's jokes aside; here's another quick query for everyone:
What do you prefer the focus of the next patch is?
A) Inventory Filling. One of those things that's been on the backburner forever; this one includes adding in a plethora of additional utility items to support the Flechette, unique to each class: i.e. Myrmidon gets extra utility weapons (Caltrops, Pilums). Crusader gets extra holy relics. Magister gets extra wands. Druid gets extra nature summons. This option also includes various tweaks to current items, in some cases turning them into scrolls.

Or B) Optional RPG/Capitalism Mode. I mentioned before that the new upgrade system, now being more robust, can support more ways to progress, so this would focus on those options. Both would alter the Walp bestiary so that they would drop either XP's or souls. Collecting XP to thresholds would allow a free trip to the level-upper screen, where we would have a level-up system similar to earlier Heroes of Might and Magic games (3 randomised upgrade options to pick from weapons you can currently use, along with a guaranteed Max HP or Max Mana increase option, and one option to buy a Full-Heal instead). Captalism mode works similar, but you can hold your souls between levels, and each new level will generate deals of the day with potential sales. Would also have a submode where all item and weapon drops are stripped from levels, but everything on the shop is cheaper and regenerated frequently and would include weapons.

Eventually, both will probably get in there, but this is what 0.97 will focus on prioritising as both are fair amounts of work.

[PresBarackbar]

I'd prefer inventory filling. Walp feels a lot like a vanilla+ HeXen experience, so I think stuff that's going to dramatically change how the game plays should probably come later. More inventory items keeps that closer to vanilla feel while also giving interesting new toys or ways to approach situations

[eharper256]

I'd prefer inventory filling. Walp feels a lot like a vanilla+ HeXen experience, so I think stuff that's going to dramatically change how the game plays should probably come later. More inventory items keeps that closer to vanilla feel while also giving interesting new toys or ways to approach situations

A was the original plan, but B came up as an option now with last weeks thoughts and I also liked the idea. So since I liked both options, I thought I'd put it to vote again.

[eharper256]

No other votes here? Surprisingly low turnout this time, usually I get at least half-a-dozen thoughts in various places, but I guess you can never predict the whimseys of the internet.

[headlesszombie]

My vote goes to A. Love the idea of making inventory items more useful and adding more to class varitey sounds really nice. That being said I like option B too. Always nice to add more depth to gameplay mods with XP and RPG systems. It is especially nice for longer play throughs of megawads and such.

[Colerx]

I vote A as well, for reasons more or less already explained above I agree with

[SallazarSpellcaster]

A.

Myriad items in these games fall into one of two categories: Rarely used, and completely forgotten}. A slew of new inventory items offering more benefits and ways to approach certain situations would be quite welcome. Further down the line, as more game-altering elements begin to be added, you may even consider having certain items with a cooldown, rather than being fully consumable. In the end, altering the inventory to be more useful and interesting to use, while hopefully minimizing clutter, would be really neat.

As an aside, I've been playing with both Myrmidon and Druid, testing their upgrades and whatnot.

With the Myrmidon, I found a problem: His axe's tertiary makes you feel unduly badass, which leads to unwanted deaths! Jokes aside, the upgrades to the Ventus Gladii, and Quietus, work really well; the Gladii become especially useful as meat-mincers. The only thing I "dislike" is the homing in the axe's tertiary upgrade - more than once I hurled the axe at a potential target only to have the projectile say, "Nah man," and sail somewhere entirely unrelated simply because there was a bloody gargoyle stuck behind some wall. True story.

Playing as the Druid, I found her slot-1 upgrade to be excellent. Though its primary fire becomes useless -given that secondary is ranged,- secondary and tertiary are great; secondary feels badass, not to mention that the constant stream of flung daggers really helps with turning alive creatures into unalive abstract painting. Turul also works wonderfully, his presence is really helpful in whittling foes down while finishing them from afar.

The upgrades for Dagon's Cane also feel pretty good; the extra damage they provide, especially to its primary attack, make it a pretty versatile weapon. The charm, however, loses some of its luster compared to the cane, as it offers little to compensate for the damage and range of the cane; its secondary, icy projectile works great against crowds, however, but its area damage makes it rather dangerous to use. Regardless, playing with Ilitheya became much more entertaining simply because of her weapon-1 upgrade.

EDIT: Found a bug with the upgraded secondary fire of the Hebiko staff - when upgraded, its secondary, upon missing, RESTORES 3 mana. I.e. if the shot is made with 10 mana, upon missing, the final number is 13 usable mana, effectively making it an infinite source of green mana -not to mention health and infighting- as long as it's usable.

[eharper256]

I vote A as well, for reasons more or less already explained above I agree with

I'd prefer inventory filling. Walp feels a lot like a vanilla+ HeXen experience, so I think stuff that's going to dramatically change how the game plays should probably come later. More inventory items keeps that closer to vanilla feel while also giving interesting new toys or ways to approach situations

My vote goes to A. Love the idea of making inventory items more useful and adding more to class varitey sounds really nice. That being said I like option B too. Always nice to add more depth to gameplay mods with XP and RPG systems. It is especially nice for longer play throughs of megawads and such.

Okay, perhaps it was just the timing before (lol). In various places I now have 6 A's to 1 B, so unless a surge of RPG mode enjoyers comes out of the woodwork, I guess we're going with that. Thanks for votiing everyone

A.
Myriad items in these games fall into one of two categories: Rarely used, and completely forgotten}. A slew of new inventory items offering more benefits and ways to approach certain situations would be quite welcome. Further down the line, as more game-altering elements begin to be added, you may even consider having certain items with a cooldown, rather than being fully consumable. In the end, altering the inventory to be more useful and interesting to use, while hopefully minimizing clutter, would be really neat.

Yep, that's the intent with this direction. It's funny you mention cooldown items, I've been playing with the idea for some time, and think I have an idea for making them work in code. I was hoping to get a test item in for the last patch, but didn't have the time.

The only thing I "dislike" is the homing in the axe's tertiary upgrade - more than once I hurled the axe at a potential target only to have the projectile say, "Nah man," and sail somewhere entirely unrelated simply because there was a bloody gargoyle stuck behind some wall. True story.

Yeah, its a thing with GZDoom's homing in general; it has a tendancy to always prefer 'close' targets even if you can't see them. You can actually see this same thing happen to me when using the Axe upgrade in one of my videos (lol).
I might see if I can copy over the Spectral Partisan's homing method from the Spear to the Axe and others. I spent ages perfecting that, and it tends to be more reliable.

Playing as the Druid, I found her slot-1 upgrade to be excellent. Though its primary fire becomes useless -given that secondary is ranged,- secondary and tertiary are great; secondary feels badass, not to mention that the constant stream of flung daggers really helps with turning alive creatures into unalive abstract painting. Turul also works wonderfully, his presence is really helpful in whittling foes down while finishing them from afar.

Technically, the primary can deliver alot more DPS when the upgrade is applied since it can stack bleeds (!), and deal like 50 a second after a few stabs, which is obviously the balance measure for it being melee. Illitheya's super-speed can be used quite well to dance between targets rather than focus firing one.

The upgrades for Dagon's Cane also feel pretty good; the extra damage they provide, especially to its primary attack, make it a pretty versatile weapon. The charm, however, loses some of its luster compared to the cane, as it offers little to compensate for the damage and range of the cane; its secondary, icy projectile works great against crowds, however, but its area damage makes it rather dangerous to use. Regardless, playing with Ilitheya became much more entertaining simply because of her weapon-1 upgrade.

Such was always the danger of having a ranged weapon compete with the wolf transformation. However, if you're stuck up close near a crowd, the ground slam is the way to go rather than the Ice Comet: it has superb AOE and you also get a very tiny window of invincibility (about 4 frames) from it, which had to be added in to prevent Hexen gibbing the player from the velocity of the slam, lol. The wolf form also gains EVEN more speed compared to base Illitheya, so the dodge and weave into claw strikes is something its incredibly good at. Of course, whichever you choose to upgrade will always make the other lose shine in turn.

EDIT: Found a bug with the upgraded secondary fire of the Hebiko staff - when upgraded, its secondary, upon missing, RESTORES 3 mana. I.e. if the shot is made with 10 mana, upon missing, the final number is 13 usable mana, effectively making it an infinite source of green mana -not to mention health and infighting- as long as it's usable.

Very confused by this as I couldn't reproduce in testing...

But then suddenly remembered that you always play skill 5. Learnt something new about that; the 50% extra mana given on the highest difficulty ALSO seems to apply to mana given from refunds I've put in the code, as well as from drops. See, it normally costs 12 to hypnotise, but you get 8 refunded if you miss. The upgrade increases the refund to 10. So in Nightmare, that actually means you get a full refund without the upgrade (8*1.5 = 12), and indeed, (10*1.5 = 15) back on miss if its upgraded. So yeah, this is a bug that's limited to Nightmare difficulty, but I'm not sure what to do about it; I'll have to research a means for refund code to check the current difficulty I guess.

[SallazarSpellcaster]

But then suddenly remembered that you always play skill 5. Learnt something new about that; the 50% extra mana given on the highest difficulty ALSO seems to apply to mana given from refunds I've put in the code, as well as from drops. See, it normally costs 12 to hypnotise, but you get 8 refunded if you miss. The upgrade increases the refund to 10. So in Nightmare, that actually means you get a full refund without the upgrade (8*1.5 = 12), and indeed, (10*1.5 = 15) back on miss if its upgraded. So yeah, this is a bug that's limited to Nightmare difficulty, but I'm not sure what to do about it; I'll have to research a means for refund code to check the current difficulty I guess.

So playing masochistically led to the discovery of an unintentional side-effect? Interesting. Mind you, it's nothing game-breaking, especially since the druid is still damn squishy and it happens only when the staff is upgraded. As for the charm, maybe a way to make it more viable in combat is having the transformation increase the druid's armor or damage resistance, so melee becomes more enticing overall. She does become a werewolf, after all.

A more in-depth RPG element to Walpurgis would also be great, but as many have mentioned, it seems like an addition for later on, once the systems to support the, well, system are in place. One time, I heard a reviewer (GGGMan to be precise) call Hexen the Dark Souls of 90's FPSs 'cause of its difficulty. Now, I don't think that's accurate, as Hexen isn't particularly difficult, and its puzzles are actually far less obtuse than many realize; still, watching it become close to a Souls-like would be an entertaining thing to play. The Kestus flask does add to that feel and, personally, I've had a lot of fun with that mode, as it makes dodging and avoiding damage while relying on other ways to regain health, such as the druid's staff, imperative, rather than depending on the loads of flasks these games have to offer.

[eharper256]

So playing masochistically led to the discovery of an unintentional side-effect? Interesting. Mind you, it's nothing game-breaking, especially since the druid is still damn squishy and it happens only when the staff is upgraded. As for the charm, maybe a way to make it more viable in combat is having the transformation increase the druid's armor or damage resistance, so melee becomes more enticing overall. She does become a werewolf, after all.

A more in-depth RPG element to Walpurgis would also be great, but as many have mentioned, it seems like an addition for later on, once the systems to support the, well, system are in place. One time, I heard a reviewer (GGGMan to be precise) call Hexen the Dark Souls of 90's FPSs 'cause of its difficulty. Now, I don't think that's accurate, as Hexen isn't particularly difficult, and its puzzles are actually far less obtuse than many realize; still, watching it become close to a Souls-like would be an entertaining thing to play. The Kestus flask does add to that feel and, personally, I've had a lot of fun with that mode, as it makes dodging and avoiding damage while relying on other ways to regain health, such as the druid's staff, imperative, rather than depending on the loads of flasks these games have to offer.

To be fair, if I really wanted to make it a souls-like I'd have to add in bosses that fill up half a level and one-shot you constantly.

Fast and squishy is the Druid's modus operandi. I will still consider adding in a universal Damage Reduction to Wolf mode though, just like 5-10% extra so that the melee can match the Myrm and Crusaders defaults.